Sherman's March - SATELLITE PHONES FOR A FREE IRAN

Everyone has an opinion about what the US should or should not be doing vis-a-vis the nascent revolution in Iran.In a recent interview, Michael Ledeen a long-time expert on Iran remarked that the freedom fighters would be greatly aided in their struggle by having satellite phones that would allow them to communicate with each other and the outside world, and not be subject to government blackouts. Sherman's March is now raising money to do this very thing. We have a way to get the equipment into Iran. Let us, the American people stand with the Iranian people in the struggle for liberty that they are dying for. These are not throw-away cells phones, they are not cheap. Please examine your heart, then reach into your wallet and make a donation. The Iranian freedom-fighters want the world's help. Let us as Americans, as the residents of the "shining city on a hill" lead the free people of the world in helping the people of Iran in their noble, righteous cause.

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Thursday, August 6, 2009

A Washington mimics Hollywood’s Art Memo by Individualist (TheIndividualist@comcast.net)“The Purpose of government is to limit the needs of its citizens from the involvement of the government.”

We’ve heard the pontificating speeches of our Greenier in Chief and similar ones from the Hollywood Actor Steven Seagal before him in the movie “On Deadly Ground”What was a panned movie rumored to be the end of an actor’s career is a starting play for a Presidency. Two heads on the same bad penny. However, being a bad actor in Washington is seldom punished.

On Deadly Ground is a 1994 environmental action-adventure film, co-produced, directed by and starring Steven Seagal. The film was a commercial disaster and is rumored to be the death knell for Steven Seagal’s career as a number one box office talent. The movie takes aim at oil companies depicting them as evil murderers out to pollute the world. Steven plays an ex Green Beret/ Navy Seal CIA part Eskimo superspy who just wants the nice quiet life of a specialist in putting out oil fires. Go figure, the evil Big Oil men however have other ideas and so we have action, murder and adventure on the Alaskan frontier. The movie held all the predictable liberal clichés against the Oil Companies but the real kicker was the three minute speech at the end in which Steven as Forest Taft rails against everything from corruption, to government ineptitude even suggesting we had cars capable of running on water and electricity for 50 years if only the Oil companies had not stopped it. He even took off the tinfoil hat. The eerie thing is that President Obama has given many parts of this same speech over and over again. The rhetoric is a carbon copy of the same tired propaganda that has been pushed on us since Jimmy Carter.

The only thing that is new is that now these individuals finally have a short window of uncontested power due to political serendipity. Despite the slim margin of victory ( 52% to 46%) the media has used its monopolistic influence to push drastic and radical changes exacerbating and creating one of the greatest economic crises since the FDR era. The democrats have been placing one bill after another indebting our country and reducing our standard of living to meet their utopian fantasies. The most recent bill is the boondoggle tax nightmare called Cap and Trade which the Obama Administration admits will skyrocket electricity costs.

How does this law work, essentially it is the worst of a tax and a regulation scheme. The government places a cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that a producer can emit to a “desired” limit. Producers will have to get a permit for the amount of pollution they emit. A producer that manages to somehow reduce emissions below their allowance will then have a permit that they can sell to other producers that cannot as yet meet the limitation. The sinister issue with this law is that the government is free to change the caps on different businesses thus allowing them to pick winners and losers. Given that the government is now a major stockholder in several banks, auto companies and General Electric due to the Fascist manipulation of the TARP funds they have incentive to do just that.

But the real question is this. Why? For what reason are we enacting an 800 billion dollar a year regressive tax that will trickle down to the consumers? The short answer is Global Warming. But what does that mean? How do we know this is even necessary? This is the issue that I wish to discuss in this article. The Science or the relative lack thereof is what we are concerned with at the present time.

I have spent some time over the last three years looking into what I could of this issue out of my own curiosity. What I can tell you is that the reports and data that are made available for the general public seem to focus on discussing the negative consequences that will inevitably arise from effects of increased carbon in the atmosphere. When the causes of the increase are discussed one is usually referred to a graph that shows a “Hockey Stick”. The last ten years plus the next projected 10 years show an increase in CO2 levels that is an increase made to appear at least 10 times the changes in the last 800,000 years. In some graphs the stick is left open ended to indicate no limit to the increase. This however does not reference the proof for this claim.

In my research initially I found reference to three experiments designed to illustrate the CO2 levels over time. These were the Antarctic Ice Cores, The Greenland Ice Cores and a study of the pores in leaves. The research I read two years back referred to the fact that the Antarctic Ice Core samples were considered the premium source of evidence. The tree leaf study was said to be varying too much because of seasonal changes and was considered the worst evidence. In researching this article today I did not find mention of this study, it may be that it is no longer considered valid so I will instead concentrate on the ice core samples which I could obtain support. Essentially the ice cores are measured to indicate the year the ice was created. This ice is then melted in a vacuum chamber and the resulting concentration of gases can evidence for you how much CO2 was concentrated in the atmosphere at the time.

Of note is the fact that the experiments between the Greenland Ice Cores and the Antarctic Ice cores do not really agree. The concentrations in Greenland are much higher and not just in the last 50 years. Scientists explain that this is due to the calcium carbonate which contaminates the ice. This residue is due to the large amount of volcanism in Greenland. The scientists state that when you carefully select ice cores in Greenland that are apart from the volcanic activity that they in fact agree but the articles never seem to state which parts of the glacier this is so I don’t know more than that.

The US Global Change Research Program is set up by congress to provide a report detailing the effects of climate change. Like the other research I found it references in detail the projected effects of increased CO2 in the report titled “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” produced by this organization. On page 13 of the 196 page report is shown a graph indicating the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in parts per million (ppm) over 800,000 years including the infamous “Hockey” stick. The caption and legend in the graph explain that this research comes from the Antarctic ice cores. This report made by the Cambridge press was delivered to congress as evidence.

Fair enough, so Indy we have the proof, we have the report. Antarctica is in the South Pole, away from pollution therefore it is the superior evidence. Here’s my observations:

Antarctica is probably the coldest place on the planet. The coldest recorded temperature is -89⁰C in 1983. The south pole ranges from -115⁰F (-81.67⁰C) to -6⁰F (-21.1⁰C). The reason that Antarctica is so cold is due to several factors including the fact that it is landlocked and has a higher elevation. The key point is that the temperature falls below -78.5⁰C at times. This is the temperature at which CO2 condenses as a solid in normal atmosphere. We note that temperatures in Greenland while cold and considered Arctic do not seem to get low enough to condense CO2.

CO2 is heavier than water. It weighs 44g/mol as opposed to 18g/mol for H20. Water is also a very unique substance in that it is actually lighter in its solid form that its liquid form due to the ability of the atoms to form crystals. We note that like a miner panhandling for gold the heavier substances will tend to go to the bottom due to their weight. Antarctica is noted for whiteouts and storms where the wind picks up ice and moves it around.

So when we obtain an ice core form Antarctica the question becomes what effect on the amount of CO2 found dissolved in the ice is the fact that the CO2 for a time is frozen, moves below the ice and then later sublimates (turns to a gas) and escapes. Would we not expect to find that there would be elevated levels of CO2 in the upper levels of the ice cores. This is just my hypothesis because in what I have been able to read this issue does not seem to be discussed although the issue of calcium carbonate is discussed for the Greenland ice Cores. It is also possible that less CO2 could be found as a result although I can’t determine why this should be so via thought experiment. It is interesting to note that the modified Greenland studies eliminating the Calcium Carbonate are said to match Antarctic cores when Greenland does not get cold enough to freeze CO2. If Antarctic temperature is a factor then would we not have to gauge the temperature during the yearly cycles in order to get a true picture of the data from our ice core experiments? What is the result of this on the experiments and what if anything was done to account for it? Would this mean the CO2 increase is less than the “Hockey” stick projects? I am not sure but then again the articles are silent on the subject as well.

The next question I have for the scientists that I have found little information on and no one seems to answer is quite simple. If the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere at the present time are not optimum whether due to nature or the activities of man then what is Optimum. If I had a magic wand and could magically set the (ppm) of CO2 in our atmosphere what is the number that you suggest. You say we moved from 280 to 380. OK what number should it be? Do we even know? If not what numbers do we guess that it should be at? To my mind if I were going to force industry and ultimately the taxpayer to spend 800 billion dollars on a project to terraform mother earth this is the first question I would want answered before I began on that prospect. One thing I do know is that that this number must be somewhere below 5% of the atmosphere. That high a concentration is lethal to most plants and animals. Beyond that I have no idea nor has anything that I have read which discusses Climate Change ever even mention this line of reasoning. This I find curious.

I do know from watching the science channel that deep in the earth’s past at the dawn of the age of the reptiles that there was thought to be five times the level of CO2 in the atmosphere than today due to volcanism. It also is thought that the planet had twice the biomass (the amount of life on the planet). Given in recent history we are lectured on the population bomb by the same liberal interest groups, would increasing the amount of food we can grow not be a benefit.

I did find the following articles that found some benefits to elevated CO2:

“Kubiske says he looks at the elevated CO2 issue a bit differently than most scientists. “Green plants and all they co-exist with have evolved over time. If you look at most of the green plants today, you find they have an excess capacity to take up carbon dioxide. That’s why they grow faster when you give them more CO2. Their physiology allows that; it evolved in the distant past, when CO2 was higher. So my response is, if green plants have excess capacity to make use of excess CO2, why not the whole system have this capacity? This isn’t the kind of thinking that has steered the scientific community, who has been looking for a more negative consequence of elevated CO2.”

This article suggests that NASA satellite data show the earth has had an increase in biomass.

On Saturday June 7 an article appeared on the Financial post website labeled “In Praise of CO2” by Don Mills, Ontario. The article stated that GPP and NPP are on their way up. From the article:

“GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere –the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe’s production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it’s been in decades, perhaps in centuries.”

I will reprint the text of the article for reference as it is no longer available on the website if I am able. It is interesting.

My greatest fear about what the liberals have done by politicizing this issue is the ultimate retardation of scientific progress in this area. They have latched on to this issue in order to justify their controlling policies as a method of back door socialism. In doing so they attack and do everything in their power to discredit and counter dissent. Anyone who questions is treated as an enemy because to them the political gain and not the science is what is important. When I read that scientists have uncovered some aspect of this issue that leads to a positive benefit to increased CO2 on some scale there is a reluctance that can be garnered from the tone. They begin with apologies or statements that the negative benefits outweigh the good or they are couched in the body of the article in scientific prose designed to put the lay person asleep before they get to the point. Scientists practically live off University Tenure and Government grants. They have a vested interest in not making public any finding that would thwart the political powers that be. True scientific progress cannot be made in a climate of fear.

If the politicians are perpetuating a fraud (knowingly or unknowingly) or are simply exaggerating the problem for political benefit it will eventually be found out. Granted from a political perspective it may be so far down the road that the reveal does not or cannot derail the policy as it becomes ingrained. How many of us remember the politicians or scientists who just 20 years ago told us man made pollution would put us in an ice age?

However, in the public mind things like CO2 levels will become that erroneous thought process that was debunked. Science in this area will then have no funding. This is unfortunate because the actual science behind this is crucial to the prospect of being able to engage in terraforming of other planets, most notably the planet Mars. Levels of CO2 and Water Vapor, what they mean and other such mysteries are a necessary understanding to have in order to be able to make an inhospitable planet livable. This issue should be researched for the purposes of science and politics should be kept out of it.

Alas the Democrat party will not allow that. They make ridiculous claims such as in 25 years if we do not do something earth will no longer support life as we know it. The rhetoric is eternally ramped because the more we shout and ooh and aw the less likely we are to pay attention to the man behind curtain.

Obama is showing us the true meaning of the phrase: “The more things change, the more things stay the same”